Translating Nouzha Fassi Fihri's La Baroudeuse: A Case Study in ...

came the negafats 52 balancing on their heads the trousseau and the baby's layette
wrapped in embroidered cloths and gifts the affluent family had sent to their
daughter to celebrate the birth of her first child.
From time to time, the negafats shouted out the traditional cry, "Praise be
to God and his Prophet." Otherwise, the procession was silent. This was not a
time for rejoicing. The city continued to celebrate marriages, procreate,
circumcise its boys and live happy and sad events, but everything happened in
discrete intimacy. Bands were unemployed. Many musicians had taken other jobs
or entered a different trade to earn a living. Everything seemed to continue as it
had in the past, but Fez had lost the lively voice that makes cities sing.
Fez was voiceless. Before, in each alley one heard the songs of artisans at
work, merchants' sallies, the news called out in a piercing tone by public criers,
the chanting mumble of students in the Koranic schools, the calls of bakers' boys
offering to carry housewives' bread to the public oven, and noisy processions
eager to be seen and heard. Now, the silence was poignant. It was a scream of
distress audible only to the soul and unbearably intensified by the imagination.
Moulay Ali felt the heart of the city beat and ache. She was wearing
herself out in anxious anticipation of what would come. He also felt a profound
empathy with this land of his ancestors that was experiencing once again a terrible
quaking of its foundations.
52 Women “hired to attend the bride during the wedding ceremony,” according to
Richard Harrell’s Dictionary of Moroccan Arabic: Arabic-English (Washington,
D.C.: Georgetown UP, 1966) 18.
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